The Keepers: Secret Societies and the Roles they Play

So I'm titling this after the greatest secret society in video game history, the Keepers, from the Thief franchise. They were an awesome society of
super stealthy persons who relied upon prophecy and a mass of accumulated knowledge to forestall imbalanced conflicts and tipping of the scales in
favor of one group or another. In the game it happened to be the groups were nature v. industrial progress.

Well, the question then is begged. What role and function does a secret society play? A lot of talk about such societies as the Illuminati or the
Freemasons, while speculative, we can reason from other real secret societies that had real impacts. Obviously we want to examine the ability of a
society to influence events, one example is the:

The AB was described as a cunning fascist mastermind, it instituted and is directly responsible for Apartheid. It took control of the South African
Government in the form of the National Party and so Afrikaners became the dominant political force in SA for 50 years.

A common theme seems to be influential members. But there is no direct evidence of ideological influence, which tends to suggest that powerful secret
societies are powerful because of the members it has, not because of the ideology it proposes, and this suggests that the power of a society is its
ability to network individuals and not to indoctrinate them. That is to say the AB had an ideology but it was a general ideology of most
Afrikaners.

All the AB facilitated was the ability for the influential members of society to get closer together and network and coordinate their efforts outside
the society within the state.

I think another role is Charisma. Can a secret society or affiliation improve your credentials and charismatic appeal. Especially in a Democracy?
Does a secret society even want to be so public? Some are.

The Ku Klux Klan managed to get many people elected to political office by promoting them as upstanding, protestant, loyal citizens.
en.wikipedia.org...

The power of the Klan in the 20s was immense, and directly influenced politics in America. I think this serves as an example where in South Africa
members of the AB were secretive but influential, members of the Klan were mundane and unimportant, but because of their membership in a strange
ritualistic fraternity became more charismatic and influential by being put into influential places through recommendation.

So a society can be secretive to internally network individuals, or it can be open to create influence.

Without digging up examples, I'm going to postulate some other criteria.

A secret society can hold secret information in the form of a secret library or through its rituals. But this only provides power and influence if
the information is actually worth something. For instance in Freemasonry, while the rituals are elaborate, maybe even artistic and poetic, they are
far from influential ideas, and are most entirely drawn from the Bible. Being a Master Mason does not intrinsically give you knowledge that can make
you more influential than you once were.

But such a potential exists, a secret knowledge that makes members more influential, I would liken this to inside trading. A secret society would
secretly let its members know which stocks to trade and when so that they become immensely wealthy.

This knowledge could translate over to other persons in the form of blackmail. Knowledge about someone used to promote influence of the members of
the society. This would be "Intelligence" in modern governmental lingo.

Counter intelligence would be knowledge on its own members, to ensure loyalty.

But such a secret society would need to have the ability to remain autonomous, secret, and influential at the same time.

So to summarize a wealth of criteria we have:

1) Influential members networking within the society.
2) The society promoting members to be influential.
3) The society providing secret knowledge to members to become influential.
4) The society using knowledge of others and members to control influence.
5) The society remaining secretive or not, to further these objectives.

And finally:

6) The society having a monopoly on something others cannot gain access to on their own.

I just realized the implication of my 6 points means one thing at least.

There doesn't need to be a secret society for the 6 articles to exist. All 6 can be present in a class of people who naturally network, for instance
the "political class", they bring influence to their networking circle, they have knowledge available only to them whether by education or by close
conversation or etc, privy information, they gain charisma by the feedback of each other's influence...

Etc.

So for instance some claim the existence of the Illuminati, but I say the Illuminati is just a name given to the informal natural relationship among
those in power and wealth who network together because such a condition exists as if it were a secret society.

Even tho there is no formal fraternity with no formal doctrine and no formal means of controlling the herd so to speak.

So for instance some claim the existence of the Illuminati, but I say the Illuminati is just a name given to the informal natural relationship among
those in power and wealth who network together because such a condition exists as if it were a secret society.

The illuminati is the group that controls what we see, the ones that perverted our minds with Disney, the ones that control the music industry #ing
the youngest generation up in ways we can't comprehend fully yet. That's their purpose, controlling our world view.

So for instance some claim the existence of the Illuminati, but I say the Illuminati is just a name given to the informal natural relationship among
those in power and wealth who network together because such a condition exists as if it were a secret society.

The illuminati is the group that controls what we see, the ones that perverted our minds with Disney, the ones that control the music industry #ing
the youngest generation up in ways we can't comprehend fully yet. That's their purpose, controlling our world view.

Eh I don't think you need a "group" to lead such a control, the elites have that natural incentive in preserving what they have against what we
(the non-elites) want. And so there doesn't have to be a hierarchical secret society controlling such incentive.

What? Are you saying it's more likely that the "elite" is working together, rather than all being greedy farts fighting for power? The illuminati
is a deep group, regardless of their actual name the symbol of the eye is clear. We control what you see, what you think, what you believe.

What? Are you saying it's more likely that the "elite" is working together, rather than all being greedy farts fighting for power? The illuminati
is a deep group, regardless of their actual name the symbol of the eye is clear. We control what you see, what you think, what you believe.

I'm saying that a secret society like the Illuminati does not need to exist for the 6 conditions of a secret society to exist among a like-minded
social group.

What? Are you saying it's more likely that the "elite" is working together, rather than all being greedy farts fighting for power? The illuminati
is a deep group, regardless of their actual name the symbol of the eye is clear. We control what you see, what you think, what you believe.

"WE"???

and, by that assertion, you're claiming to be just what part or cog in the 'supposed wheels of influence' that many have stated to be fragments of
the machine - the 'illuminati/free masons', etc.
???

can't argue with that, but... we can, each and every, do our level best to separate ourselves from the 'machinations' which attempt to guide,
govern or 'police us' as private, individual citizens. (???)

So for instance some claim the existence of the Illuminati, but I say the Illuminati is just a name given to the informal natural relationship among
those in power and wealth who network together because such a condition exists as if it were a secret society.

The illuminati is the group that controls what we see, the ones that perverted our minds with Disney, the ones that control the music industry #ing
the youngest generation up in ways we can't comprehend fully yet. That's their purpose, controlling our world view.

Eh I don't think you need a "group" to lead such a control, the elites have that natural incentive in preserving what they have against what we
(the non-elites) want. And so there doesn't have to be a hierarchical secret society controlling such incentive.

can't argue with that, but... we can, each and every, do our level best to separate ourselves from the 'machinations' which attempt to guide,
govern or 'police us' as private, individual citizens. (???)

Some can, if I was unlucky enough to get my exbitch pregnant I doubt I'd be able to leave a debt cycle! But more importantly, and this is about the
UK(can't speak for the U.S) people don't even care if they're free or not because they like being obsessed with possessions, and we've all got
used to the billions of cameras watching us!

Being free to me is waking up and having no middle eastern children killed in my name, creating what you need to survive rather than depending of
others to create your food clothes and shelter, free to travel abroad without getting my nuts played with, being able to actually have goals that
don't revolve money or the need of it.

There's probably another few wee ideologies I could throw in, but the basics is wanting every one on this world to be happy, at peace and free

a world where you can wake up in the morning, go about your daily chores/tasks, etc.

all the while interacting with friends, family, neighbors of the same ilk. bartering, trading, buying selling.... BUT .... on a whole different level
than, say, 'retail', you do this for me. i'll do this for you. (???)

utopia comes to mind, but not quite exactly.

there's still effort required and involved.

I could do/live that...

give/teach, show a man how to fish a coupla times a week.
in lieu of or in return for similarly-based value and or sustenance, actions and /or efforts on their behalf.

hunting, trapping as well.

to a man how to feed his family from the wild, and i'd say ya pretty much have a friend, confidant and companion for life. (????)

Well imagine this, we taught all our children that the secret to happiness was helping people, if we could set a good example by building each
other's homes and sharing what we have and every one actually did it, there would literally be no power to the greedy

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